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The Many Lives of The Batman Critical Approaches To A Superhero and His Media Roberta Pearson Full Chapter PDF
The Many Lives of The Batman Critical Approaches To A Superhero and His Media Roberta Pearson Full Chapter PDF
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CRITICAL APPROACHES
TO A SUPERHERO
THE MANY LIVES OF THE BATMAN
Critical Approaches to a Superhero and his Media
ROUTLEDGE newyork
Acknowledgments v
Contributors x
Introduction ]
William Uricchio and Roberta E Pearson
Hi
iv Contents
v
vi Acknowledgmen ts
Yes, Batman is still Bruce Wayne, Alfred is still his butler and Com
missioner Gordon is still chief of police, albeit just barely. There is
still a young sidekick named Robin, along with a batmobile, a batcave
and a utility belt. The Joker, Two-Face, and the Catwoman are still
in evidence amongst the roster of villains. Everything is exactly the
same, except for the fact that it's all totally different.
vii
viii Foreword
Tony Bennett
Griffith University
Brisbane
January 1990
Contributors
1
2 Introduction
"And thus is bom this weird figure of the dark . . . this avenger of
evil. . . The Batman." Thus concluded "The Legend of Batman/' a two-
page introduction that led off Batman #1 (Spring 1940). Though this
story appeared less than a year after Batman's introduction in the open
ing pages of Detective Comics #27 (May 1939), the character had al
ready become a "legend," both a resonant signifier and a valuable prop
erty—the world's second superhero. The first superhero, Superman,
represented a calculated response to the Nazi concept of the Uber-
mench: an ideal, superior man who would lead the masses to victory.
Created by two Jewish high-school buddies from Cleveland, Ohio, Jerry
Siegal and Joe Shuster, Superman first appeared in June 1938 in Action
Comics #1. A native of Krypton, Superman was a uniquely American
Ubermench with a social conscience. Discovering his superpowers, he
"decided he must turn his titanic strength into channels that would
benefit mankind, and so was created Superman! Champion of the op
pressed, the physical marvel who had sworn to devote his existence to
helping those in need!"
Superman's overnight smash success encouraged the character's
owners, National Periodical Publications, to commission a similar
character, Batman. The host of costumed superheroes following in the
Batman's wake supplied clear evidence that the phenomenon of the
superhero had arrived. But neither Superman nor Batman nor any of
their super colleagues could have achieved national visibility had the
comics industry not existed.
Initially intended as circulation boosters in the rivalry between news
paper publishing giants William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer,
newspaper comic strips first appeared in the last decade of the nine
teenth century. The Yellow Kid, created in 1895 by Richard Outcault
for Pulitzer's New York World, is the most notable character of this
4
Batman: Commodity as Myth 5
period. Acquired by Hearst for his New York Journal, the character's
association with the Hearst paper's sensationalism led to the term
"yellow journalism." Soon after the Yellow Kid's appearance, comic
strips proliferated geometrically both in number and in popularity, their
growth enabled by the creation of the comic strip syndicates. In a
continuation of the Hearst-Pulitzer rivalry, the syndicates competed
fiercely in their expansion, and continue to control the comic strip
market in the United States to the present.
By the first decade of the twentieth century, comic strips, now com
monplace in the daily papers and as special color Sunday supplements,
had achieved enough popularity to warrant the publication of book
form reprint collections for both commercial and promotional pur
poses. Many of these collections—the first "comic books"—appeared
through the 1920s. Published from 1929 to 1930, the thirty-six issues of
The Funnies, a tabloid-format magazine printing original comic strips,
represented the first four-color newsstand publication.
The format that came to be known as the comic book first appeared
in 1933, thanks to the efforts of Harry Wildenberg and Max C. Gaines,
members of the sales staff of New York's Eastern Color Printing Com
pany. The Company produced a print run of 10,000 copies of Funnies
on Parade, a 7V2" x 10" magazine containing thirty-two pages of Sunday
newspaper comic strip reprints, for the Proctor and Gamble Company
to give away as premiums. Shortly thereafter Eastern Color, spurred
on by the enthusiasm of Max Gaines, produced Famous Funnies: A
Carnival of Comics and then Century of Comics in quantities of over
100,000. Gaines sold these comics to major advertisers such as Milk-
O-Malt, Wheatena, Kinney Shoe Stores and others, for use as premiums
and radio giveaways. The premium and give-away schemes were so
successful that, early in 1934, Gaines persuaded Eastern to produce
35,000 copies of Famous Funnies, Series 1.
Distributed by the Dell Publishing Company to chain stores, the 64
page color comics, priced at ten cents, immediately sold out. Eastern
promptly released Famous Funnies #1 in May (cover dated July) 1934,
which became, upon release of #2 in July, the first regularly scheduled
comic book magazine.
A new commodity form, the comic book experienced a period of rapid
growth within the consumer market. Unlike the comic strip industry,
which served the preexistent newspaper industry and was controlled
by a handful of syndicates, the comic book industry was virgin territory,
promising quick and easy profits. New publishers constantly entered
and, in some cases, subsequently left, the field.
One of these entrants played a pivotal role in the creation of Batman.
In 1935, the New York City-based National Periodical Productions
6 Boichel
entered the comic book market with the tabloid-sized New Fun. After
a name change to More Fun and a format conversion to standard comic
book magazine size, this publication became the first title regularly
printing new material created specifically for the comic book market.
Two years later, National Periodical Productions released Detective
Comics, one of the earliest comic books devoted exclusively to a partic
ular genre. Late in 1937, Harry Donenfeld bought National Periodical
Publications and established Detective Comics' initials as the imprint
for the company's entire output. Shortly thereafter, in the spring of
1938, DC moved onto the center stage of the industry with the publica
tion of Action Comics #1.
A year after Superman's success, DC introduced Batman, created by
artist Bob Kane and writer Bill Finger, in Detective Comics #27. At the
time a young cartoonist in his early twenties, Bob Kane had begun his
career in comics two years earlier in 1936 at the Eisner/Iger studio, the
first company devoted to producing work for the comic book industry.
Kane then worked briefly for the Fleischer Studio doing fill-ins, inking,
and opaquing on Betty Boop cartoons. Upon leaving the Fleischer Stu
dio, Kane returned to comics, getting a job at DC producing features
such as "Rusty and His Pals," and "Clip Carson," both of which were
scripted by a former high-school pal, Bill Finger. Finger had worked as
a shoe salesman in the Bronx, but his passion for pulp magazines se
duced him away from his job and into the allied field of scripting for
the nascent comic book. Although Bob Kane received sole credit from
DC for the creation of Batman, both the Batman character and the
classic period, or Golden Age, Batman mythos were the co-creations of
Bob Kane and Bill Finger.
The Batman mythos springs from the popular culture of the 1930s—
movies, pulps, comic strips, and newspaper headlines—in which both
Kane and Finger were fully immersed. According to Bob Kane, two
movies contributed significantly to the formulation of the Batman
character. The Mark of Zorro (1920) starred Douglas Fairbanks as Zorro,
a wealthy landowner who maintained both an alter ego as a masked
and caped crimefighter and a secret cave-hideout beneath his mansion.
From this film came the Bruce Wayne-Wayne Manor/Batman-Batcave
duality. The Bat Whispers (1930) featured a dual identity of a more
schizophrenic nature: that of a detective and his alter ego, the murderer
dubbed "The Bat," who dressed in a costume which inspired that of
Batman. This film also featured a prototype of the Bat-Signal.
Finger's depiction of the Batman as a figure of awe and mystery as
well as a master sleuth and scientist owed much to pulp magazine
superstars Doc Savage and the Shadow, created by Kenneth Robeson
and Walter Gibson, and to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's master sleuth,
Batman: Commodity as Myth 7
ing that his parents were also murdered. Bruce revealed his secret
identity and, after providing Dick with the necessary training, initiated
him as his partner. Kane, Finger, and Kane's newly hired young assis
tant, Jerry Robinson, designed the Robin character to enable younger
readers to identify more closely with the Caped Crusader's adventures.
The character was an immediate success and so widely imitated that
the junior sidekick emerged as one of the most important terms in the
superhero lexicon. Three years later, Batman #16 introduced another
permanent fixture in the Batman mythos, the only character privy to
the secret identities of Batman and Robin. Alfred, the faithful butler of
Wayne Manor and the Batcave, lent a homey touch to Batman's harsh
environs and was ever ready to provide a steadying and reassuring hand.
Just as these supporting characters are integral to the Batman legend,
so too are his foes and rivals. An immense and labyrinthian catalogue
of criminals has crossed the path of the dark knight detective through
out his fifty-year history. Attempting to distinguish his adventures
from the mundane cops and robbers genre, Batman's writers/artists
have continually striven to create villains worthy of the attentions of
a legend. Many of these villains mirrored aspects of Batman's character
and development. The villains, like the Batman, frequently have their
origin in a traumatic event or series of events that has forever altered
their lives. In the case of the villains, however, the trauma invariably
drives them to madness and a life of crime, if not a quest for world
domination, the latter reflecting the anxieties about fascism that were
particularly prevalent during Batman's early years. These villains often
also share Bruce Wayne's status as a respected member of society.
Batman's earliest foes, Doctor Death (Detective Comics #29, July
1939) and Professor Hugo Strange (Detective Comics #36, February
1940) were both respected professionals who turned on society in a
crazed quest for self-gain. Clayface (Detective Comics # 40, June 1949),
an aging silent film star, transformed himself into one of his early roles
to wreak vengeance on those he saw as robbing him of his immortality
by remaking his early "classics." The Scarecrow first appeared in
World's Finest #3 (Fall 1941), a title created to showcase Batman and
Superman adventures. He was a professor of psychology who fell victim
to his own obsession with fear. Adopting as his alter ego the derisive
nickname "Scarecrow," jestingly applied to him by his students and
colleagues at the university, he used his knowledge of fear as an extor
tionist's tool.
As a child, the Penguin (Detective Comics #58, December 1941)
experienced the unending ridicule of his schoolmates, who constantly
reminded him of his resemblance to the ungainly bird. Oswald Chester
field Cobblepot dedicated his life to vengeance and, after attaining a
Batman: Commodity as Myth 9
The very children for whose unruly behavior I would want to prescribe
psychotherapy in an anti-superman direction, have been nourished
(or rather poisoned) by the endless repetition of Superman stories.
How can they respect the hard-working mother, father or teacher who
is so pedestrian, trying to teach common rules of conduct, wanting
you to keep your feet on the ground and unable even figuratively
speaking to fly through the air? Psychologically Superman under
mines the authority and dignity of the ordinary man and woman in
the minds of children, (pp. 97-98)
naled a shift in popular opinion and the industry began to feel pressure
from all sides. In an effort to avoid external censorship or government
regulation, a group of publishers, "The Comics Magazine Association
of America," created the "Comics Code Authority" late in 1954. De
signed to function as an independent regulator, the Code Authority
screened all publishers' product prior to publication for violations of the
Wertham-inspired Comics Code. Some of the Code's precepts follow.
In every instance good shall triumph over evil and the criminal pun
ished for his misdeeds.
Crimes shall never be presented in such a way as to promote distrust
in the forces of law and justice. ...
All lurid, unsavory, gruesome illustrations shall be eliminated.
All situations dealing with the family unit should have as their
ultimate goal the protection of the children and family life. In no way
shall the breaking of the moral code be depicted as rewarding.
A comic book fulfilling these and other standards bore the "Approved
by the Comics Code Authority" stamp, tacitly required of all titles
beginning in 1955, in its upper-right-hand corner.
The adoption of the Comics Code marked a turning point in the
history of the comic book industry. One by one titles, publishers, and
even entire genres of comic books disappeared. With the exceptions
of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, the superhero vanished
entirely for a period of several years.
The post-war tendency to a sunnier Batman evident before the Wer-
tham crisis intensified after the Code's introduction. The first Batman
titles carrying the Comics Code Authority stamp, Batman #90 and
Detective Comics #217 (March 1955), signalled the inception of a
makeover of the Batman mythos. Detective Comics #233 (July 1956)
introduced the character of Batwoman, a mirror image of Batman, com
plete with a Batcave and Batcycle of her own. Perhaps intended to ward
off further charges of homosexuality, Batwoman functioned as a female
presence and potential love interest. Determined to establish both Bat
man and Robin's heterosexuality, the writers introduced Batwoman's
niece as the Boy Wonder's possible girlfriend in Batman #139 (May
1961).
This introduction of females coupled with other textual alterations
both reflected and contributed to the downward spiral in the sales of
Batman and Detective Comics that had continued uninterrupted since
the late 1940s. Throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s, Batman
stories increasingly resembled the science fiction scenarios that per
vaded this anxious period in America's history, as the Caped Crusader
14 Boichel
faced alien menaces on the streets of Gotham and travelled through the
universe to fight them on their home turf. During this same period,
Batman began to behave more like a school prefect than a crime-fighter,
confronting villains who had gradually evolved from criminals into
pranksters. The character, severed from its roots as dark knight vigi
lante, was so ill-defined during this period that even Batman himself
was subjected to periodic transformations, surreally assuming the
forms of a variety of monstrosities as well as inanimate objects.
Nineteen sixty-four found Batman down and out, but over the next
few years a variety of factors brought the Dynamic Duo back into the
spotlight. At the start of 1964, Jack Schiff, editor of the Batman titles
since 1940, was succeeded by fellow old-hand Julius Schwartz, who
proceeded to overhaul DC's ailing property. Scwhwartz relieved Bat
man-creator Bob Kane of his charge of overseeing the ghost artists and
providing the finished artwork. Bringing in artists he could work with
more closely, he ordered a remodeling of everything from the Batcave
to the Bat-costume. More importantly, he accelerated the return of the
classic villains that Schiff had initiated before his departure.
This revamping coincided with the emergence into the public eye of
the pop art and camp movements, which shared an aesthetic apprecia
tion of the mass-produced commodity as a system of cultural significa
tion. The soup-can paintings of Andy Warhol and the giant comic
book-panel canvases of Roy Lichtenstein epitomized pop art's physical
representations of the camp sensibility's attitude towards mass culture.
By 1965 the pop/camp movement, at the height of fashion, had reposi
tioned and revalued comic books as central to its aesthetic. As a result,
the previously unthinkable thought of a television series based on a
comic book character emerged.
The recipient of a massive promotional campaign, Batman, the tele
vision series, produced by William Dozier and starring Adam West as
Batman and Burt Ward as Robin, premiered on ABC on January 12,
1966. The show, structured around the movie-serial "cliffhanger" end
ing which enabled two prime-time episodes each week, shot to the top
of the ratings. In no time "Batmania" sent comic book sales soaring
and chased licensing profits out of the cellar and through the roof.
Spawning a feature film released by 20th Century Fox and spanning
three seasons of prime time, the Batman television series ran for 120
episodes. The show featured many Hollywood celebrities in regular
appearances as Batman's foes and rivals, including Cesar Romero as the
Joker, Frank Gorshin as the Riddler, Burgess Meredith as the Penguin,
and Julie Newmar, Eartha Kitt, and Lee Merriwether in turns as the
Catwoman. In addition, the series supplied impetus for the first Batman
animated cartoons, which were aired Saturday mornings in 1968 and
Batman: Commodity as Myth 15
olson as the Joker, broke every box-office record in the books. Breaking
all precedents, the videotape was released a mere five months later and
proceeded to set more records. "Batmania" returned with a vengeance
and 1989 became the year of the bat.
DC took full advantage of such unprecedented success, producing
new bat-texts in a variety of formats. Released simultaneously with the
videotape of Batman, Arkham Asylum explores the pervasiveness of
madness in Batman's world. Billed as a sequel to The Killing Joke and
produced by another British writer-artist team, Grant Morrison and
Dave McKean, the $24.95 hardback demolished existing records for
dollar-volume sales on a comic book. Arkham Asylum presents Batman
confronting his own "heart of darkness" as mirrored by his greatest
foes, all of whom are kept locked up in the Arkham Asylum for the
Criminally Insane.
DC also published bat-texts featuring alternative Batmen of the past
and future. Released for Christmas 1989, Gotham by Gaslight, an
"imaginary" tale set in Victorian Gotham, pits Batman against Jack
the Ripper. The Spring, 1990 release of Digital Justice, a computer
generated graphic novel by Pepe Moreno, featuring a Bat-computer-
entity analogous to those found in the cyberpunk novels of William
Gibson, projects the Batman mythos well into the twenty-first century.
Here Batman confronts his old nemesis, this time in the form of "the
Joker virus." As Batman conquers time itself, it becomes increasingly
difficult to keep in mind comic book-artist Robert Crumb's disclaimer:
"Just remember kids, it's only lines on paper!"
2
Notes from the Batcave:
An Interview with Dennis O'Neil
Roberta E. Pearson and William Uricchio
Q. When you first started to write Batman, did you bring a new
perspective to the character?
A. My brillant idea was simply to take it back to where it started.
I went to the DC library and read some of the early stories. I tried to
get a sense of what Kane and Finger were after. With the benefit of
twenty years of sophistication in story telling techniques and twenty
years of learning from our predecessors, Neal Adams and I did the story
"The Secret of the Waiting Graves." Batman was kind of my assignment
from then on. It was a different system in that writers or artists were
not assigned to characters as they are today. I showed up once a week
with a finished script and got another assignment and it just so hap
18
Notes from the Batcave 19
pened for several years that that assignment was Batman—plus other
things. You certainly couldn't survive writing one comic book a month
then, but you would do okay if you could write four.
Q. What was your vision of the Batman?
A. The basic story is that he is an obsessed loner. Not crazy, not
psychotic. There is a big difference between obsession and psychosis.
Batman knows who he is and knows what drives him and he chooses
not to fight it. He permits his obsession to be the meaning of his life
because he cannot think of anything better. He is also rife with natural
gifts. He is possibly the only person in the world who could do what he
is doing. But he is not for one second ignorant of why he is doing it and
even what is unhealthy about it, nor is he ever out of control. That is
why I have to edit the writers who have Batman kill somebody. I think
this is not something he does. The trauma that made him Batman had
to do with a wanton waste of life. That same trauma that makes him
go catch criminals will forbid his ever taking a life. He is not Dirty
Harry. He is not Judge Dredd. He is, God knows, not Rambo, though
some people want to make him that. I said this a couple of months ago
to an audience in London and got the one spontaneous burst of applause
I ever got in my life, which did my heart good. It shows there are some
liberal humanists left out there.
Q. What kind of changes do you think the character has been
through in the twenty years that you have been involved with him?
A. I started editing Batman about four years ago. I gather I got
the job because I had written what people kindly considered to be
something close to the definitive version of the character. Therefore,
presumably, I would be able to edit the character. In the twenty years
that I have been around Batman he has been pretty much the obsessed
loner. However, there was a time right before I took over as Batman
editor when he seemed to be much closer to a family man, much closer
to a nice guy. He seemed to have a love life and he seemed to be very
paternal towards Robin. My version is a lot nastier than that. He has a
lot more edge to him. I think of Frank Miller's and my Batman as the
same person. I think that Frank may have taken the concept further
than I did but we were both working with the same material. Steve
Englehart did a nicer version of the same guy who was no where near
as obsessed as mine. I have to emphasize that none of these are wrong—
they are just different.
Batman started off as a first cousin to the mystery men of the pulps
in '39 and '40. He held that persona in varying degrees until the 50s
when he became a sort of ebullient scout master for awhile. He was a
bright, sunny fellow who would walk down the street in the middle of
20 Pearson and Uricchio
the day and people would say "Hey, Batman, hi, how's it going?" He
could also be very science fictiony. Very light. The science fiction was
really fantasy, only with a rocket ship instead of a magic carpet. He
stayed like that until the '60s when he effectively became a comedian
or a perpetrator of camp, which I think is a one line joke.
Q: How do you think Robin functions with Batman?
A: Robin as far as I can tell serves as a counterbalance. He has
been a bright, cheerful, sunny presence in an otherwise grim world in
the times when we have been playing Batman darkly. He is the equiva
lent of the comic relief scenes in Shakespeare's plays. This is not to say
he is specifically there to introduce yucks, but he does bring a kind of
light tone into all of this grimness and also effectively humanizes
Batman. If Batman were a real person, Robin probably would be keeping
him from crossing the line into nuttiness. It gets hard talking about
these things because I don't have the critical vocabulary to differentiate
between the character within the story and the character that is con
trived for story purposes by a writer. But Robin functions in both areas.
In the made-up universe of the stories, he is what keeps Batman and
Bruce Wayne from going too far. In terms of the purpose he serves for
writers, he allows the story to lighten up from time to time. When I
was writing my Legends of the Dark Knight, which was without Robin,
I found that I had to make Alfred a bit wittier than he usually is for
exactly that purpose. I needed some lightness. I needed some humor in
the story and it would have been out of character for Bruce Wayne and
Batman to supply it so it fell to Alfred. Robin also serves the old
hero sidekick role in allowing Batman to talk and explain things and
therefore explain them to the reader. He allows for another dimension
of human interest to come in. He has his functions both in Bruce
Wayne's life and in the life of those of us who have to write about Bruce
Wayne.
Q: Since Robin seems so necessary, why did Dick Grayson aban
don his Robin role and become Night Wing?
A: I imagine the writers wanted to do Teen Titans and began to
look around for popular teen characters. Robin was certainly the most
popular of them and certainly the oldest teenage character in our little
universe. Robin was simply a logical character to put in Teen Titans
and he couldn't be Robin anymore, so they made him Night Wing.
These decisions are seldom made with any long-range plans. It's usually
more like, "Hey, it seems like a good idea now." Superman became
God over the years because guys said "Wouldn't it be neat if he could
freeze things with his breath? Okay, let's write that in." Not realizing
that they were stuck with that forever. Many of the writers I know
Note'; from the Batcave 21
Q: How did you decide to come up with the device of the phone
in-poll as to whether he was going to live or not?
A: We were sitting around brainstorming at an editorial retreat.
I mentioned the 900 number that had been used by Saturday Night Live
and one or two other places and Jenette [Kahn] thought it was an
interesting idea. We began to discuss how we could use it. I guess I
came up with killing somebody and the logical candidate to be in peril
was Jason because we had reason to believe that he wasn't that popular
anyway. It was a big enough stunt that we couldn't do it with a minor
character. If we were going to do it, it had to be a big, significant change.
I don't think it would have had the impact we wanted if we had created
a character and built him up and then put him in danger. It had to be
something dramatic. This was the first time we were going to have real
reader participation in comic books. Then I confess, it seemed like a
great caper. It had that value to us. Like wow, what a neat thing to do.
Nothing has ever happened, but it's scary because I keep thinking it
might.
The death of Robin caper also made me realize that all this goes a
lot deeper in people's consciousnesses than I thought. All these years,
I've considered myself to just be writing stories. I now know that that's
wrong. That Batman and Robin are part of our folklore. Even though
only a tiny fraction of the population reads the comics, everyone knows
about them the way everybody knows about Paul Bunyan, Abe Lincoln,
etc. Batman and Robin are the postindustrial equivalent of folk figures.
They are much deeper in our collective psyches than I had thought.
Because these characters have been around for 50 years, everybody in
the country knows about them. They have some of the effect on people
that mythology used to and if you get into that you can't avoid the
question of religion.
Q: When you've got a character who has been around as many
years as Batman and who, as you say, has a prominent place in the
nation's psyche, how do you control character consistency across differ
ent titles?
A: Well, back in the old days you didn't. Julie Schwartz did a
Batman in Batman and Detective and Murray Boltinoff did a Batman
in the Brave and Bold and apart from the costume they bore very little
resemblance to each other. Julie and Murray did not coordinate their
efforts, did not pretend to, did not want to, were not asked to. Continu
ity was not important in those days. Now it has become very important,
which is decidedly a mixed blessing. I sometimes want to say to these
people who insist on continuity, "Hey, it is just a story. This is not
real life. Don't get upset." Also, I think it's the idea of Batman that's
important, the folklore/mythological roots of the character rather than
the foolish consistency which, Emerson said, is the hobgoblin of little
minds. Nonetheless, continuity is something our audience demands.
Q: Why more now than before?
A: I don't know. I think maybe the audience is more cohesive.
Comic books are not read on a hit or miss basis anymore. They are read
by fewer people than they were in the '40s but the current fans read a
great deal more intently and with a great deal of care. Also, thanks to
the direct market, it is now possible to get every issue of everything.
Back in the old days, it was sort of newsstand roulette and fans couldn't
worry about consistency because they didn't have all the stories. Also,
letter columns did not exist back then so there was no arena to exchange
opinions, nor were there conventions and all those other places where
fans can get together and compare notes. Now, I keep coming back to
24 Pearson and Uricchio
the point that the Batman phenomenon has certain things in common
with religion in that it is built around a mythology or psuedo-mythology
and maybe that explains the concern with continuity. Anyway, for
whatever reason, continuity and consistency have become important
so DC has a guy like me to watch over things. Anything that has Bats
in it I have to approve, therefore presumably I am the quality control.
I am the guy who keeps the character consistent and says, "You may
or may not do this with him."
Q: How do you go about making sure all your writers and artists
are dealing with essentially the same character?
A: By giving people a bible which sets limits and by looking at
the material. If Bats is doing something totally out of character then
the writer will be asked to rewrite the story. It's as simple as that. It's
more or less true of the other characters also. If were are going to do
anything with Superman, Mike [Carlin] has to see it. If we are going to
do anything with Wonder Woman, Karen Berger has to see it. We
have lists of what characters are assigned to which editors. Obviously,
Batman is a lot more important than the rest because of all of the
brouhaha attending the character at the moment. But, two years from
now Superman may be the big deal and Mike will have to do all this
reading of other people's scripts.
Q: Is the obsessive return to the origin story for reasons of charac
ter continuity or is it just because of a turnover in readership?
A: The origin is the engine that drives Batman. The reason we
didn't meddle with the origin when we were meddling with a lot of
origins four years ago is that it's perfect. When the question of changing
it came up, I said, "How are you going to improve on this?" It simply
in one incident explains everything that anybody will ever need to
know about the character. Why he does what he does and why he is
who he is. The times I have written it, it just seemed organic to the
story. In the old days, we would have repeated it every three years
because the assumption was that the readership turned over every three
years. This may have been true back then. The origin story has appeared
a little too often recently. When I did it in Legends of the Dark Knight,
I felt it needed to be there but I made it a dream and made the characters
snowmen to at least make it a little different. I have put out one of my
ban memos saying that nobody gets to do the origin for at least one
year. I put one out about the Joker six months ago saying no Joker
stories for at least one year because we have done him too much.
Q: Could we talk a little bit about the production process? Could
you tell us on a very basic level what is the relationship among the
Notes from the Batcave 25
editor, writer, penciller, inker, letterist, colorist and how does every
body work together?
A: Anything I tell you will be a broad generalization. One of the
things that makes the job interesting is that there is no right way to do
it. Every editor I have ever met, every editor I worked for, does it a
different way and I do it a different way from day to day or hour to hour.
Basically, in very broad general terms, a writer is given an assignment—
it may be that he is assigned a series, it may be one issue or it may be
that he comes in with an idea for a series. At any rate, he ends up with
an assignment and meets with the editor, by phone, for lunch or in the
office and talks about his story. The writer and editor agree on what
the story is going to be about. That is pretty basic. From there on it can
go a lot of different ways. My preferred way of working as a writer is to
write a script, which looks very much like a television script. It's a
format that I have developed over the years. There are panel and page
numbers and descriptions of the visuals and dialogue and captions. The
other method is that the writer does a plot. This has become known as
the Marvel way of working since it was developed by Stan Lee. The
plot can be anything from a paragraph, as it was in the early 60s with
Stan, to something that is as long as a final script. Okay, the penciller
pencils the story and at that point it comes back to the writer and the
writer adds copy and if the writer is doing his job, he also does balloon
placement.
going over the pencil with ink so it will photograph. But, like the
letterer, an inker can make an immense amount of difference. He can
do anything from redrawing and correcting the artist's mistakes, to
adding textures, to giving depth to the picture by his placement of
blacks, by his placement of sepiatone, by highlights. The best inkers
are always intensely conscious of where the light source is in the panel.
A good inker can take a mediocre pencil job and make it great and,
conversely, a bad inker can take a pretty good pencil job and make it
look awful. The guys who do this work tell me that it is a very different
mind set to pencilling. A really good inker chooses to be an inker but
probably could make his living as a penciller.
book terms and they usually don't get much work. The colorist, like
everybody else in the process, has to think of himself as one of the story
tellers. The process of coloring is far harder than you would imagine
because with super heroes, you have certain givens. Batman's costume
is not going to change. That gives the artists real headaches in terms of
what they can do in backgrounds. For example, how to handle the color
of the clothing of the people around Batman, particularly since they
move from place to place in the context of the story. It is really far more
complicated than dabbing colors on the page.
Q: We want to talk about the business side of the industry and
ask you if you see really significant changes in the relationship between
creative types and the company over the past few years.
A: Oh Lord, yes. My timing stinks. When I started out the editor
was God because it didn't make any difference who was doing the
books, not a bit. Batman sold regardless of who the creative team was.
So if a writer was giving you trouble, the hell with him. Get out your
Rolodex, call the next warm body. Up till about ten years ago that is
the way it worked. Then DC in particular began to emphasize the
creators. The audience became sophisticated and began to demand a
certain quality level. Now it is a very complicated relationship between
the company, particularly as represented by the editor, and the creative
people. Creative people have a lot more say in what goes down. We
consult with them constantly about everything. In the old days, if there
was going to be any kind of major change, the writer could find out
about it the same time the readers did. I have been fired off books and
didn't know it until I suddenly realized I hadn't done a Wonder Woman
for four months and found out there had been six issues done in that
time. We wouldn't dare do that now. If we are going to have any major
change in policy, we call the creators.
Q: The artist and writers also started getting royalties a few years
ago. Is that right?
A: Yes. That was seven or eight years ago. The probable reason
was the rise of the direct market. I've heard that the business people
here at DC were coming to believe that the direct market was the wave
of the future and that this would create a body of knowledgeable readers.
In the old days, when sales were all through the newsstands, quality
didn't matter a lot, much less the names attached to that quality,
because it was virtually impossible to be sure of reaching the readers
who would care about good material and would notice bylines. With
the direct sales shops, that isn't true. Those are precisely the readers
you do reach through the comic shops and if that s the case, it s just
good business to reward the creators who produce higher sales. You
28 Pearson and Uricchio
I found it's the easiest way to do it. If I am in the middle of a story and
I am really cooking and it's 3 a.m., hey watch out. It's a lot easier for
me to write "ECU Myra" than "We see Myra's face close up." The nice
thing about writing screenplays is that the language is such a nice
economical shorthand. It's almost music notation. I have written two
television shows in the last six months and I find it easy work because
you don't have to work on transitions. You write "cut to . . ." and the
camera man accomplishes the transition for you. It seems like a good
thing to borrow from cinema insofar as we do a lot of the same things.
Q: But most writers don't use this cinematic shorthand?
A: No. Take Alan Moore, for example. His description for the
first panel of The Killing Joke, one ninth of a page, is two and a half
single space pages. It took me a day to read the script of The Killing
Joke. It was a pretty good day though, I enjoyed it.
Q: How did Brian Bolland feel about the lengthy descriptions?
A: Alan will give you this incredibly detailed description of not
only what is in the panel but why it's there, and what happened twenty
years ago, and what the character had for breakfast this morning and what
the kids were doing. Then at the end he'll say, "You could ignore all that
and do whatever you want." So I think Brian basically followed what
Alan indicated. At one point we thought about publishing Alan's script
because it is so entertaining in itself and then ultimately decided that
that would be a little bit like being invited back stage to a magic show.
Q: We saved one of the things we are most interested in for last,
which is the relationship between comics and films. What similarities
and differences do you see between the two?
A: Well, there is an awful lot that is similar but you can carry
the analogy too far. Basically, if a comic book works, you will be able
to get the broad story by looking at the pictures. But comic books are
meant to be read. Reading requires more participation from the audi
ence than cinema where if you are just passive you can still get it. You
have to bring your brain cells to reading. I think that there is that
interaction between the part of you that perceives images and the part
of you that translates the very abstract stuff that is language. If you like
comics, I think it's because of some kind of chemical process in your
brain. Those two messages entering your consciousness at the same
time through the same sense organ are very pleasing to you. If you are
looking at a movie or television show, it's a different experience. You
don't have to use your imagination as much, the language is coming in
through the ear, the visual information is coming in through your eye.
That's what you experience everyday in your life, it's not special in the
way of perceiving a comic book.
3
Batman and the Twilight of the Idols:
An Interview with Frank Miller
Christopher Sharrett
33
34 Sharrett
’t Was goed, dat hij zoo gesproken had, want velen onder hen
hadden na die gebeurtenis het gevoel alsof zij nu brave jongens
waren en tot zooiets zeker niet in staat zouden zijn.
„Hij krijgt levenslang,” roept Chris, op wien een ernstig feit nooit veel
indruk maakt.
Deze heele gebeurtenis had echter vrij wat tijd [201]in beslag
genomen en eer ze ’t wisten, was het twaalf uur.
„Nou gaan we naar de Hooge Brug,” zei Puckie. „Ambro en Wim
zullen er zeker zijn.”
„Ja,” zegt Chris. „Dat je nou één pijpie wegneemt is nog daaraan toe,
maar ze waren met niet weinig tevreden.”
„Ik niet,” zegt Karel ernstig. „Maar ik weet van een jongen, die tot
driemaal toe schoenen gegapt had en die toen in een tuchtschool
werd opgeborgen.”
„Dan had ie er vast gebrek aan,” zegt Paul nadenkend. „Want wie
van ons zou ’t nu in z’n hoofd krijgen om een paar laarzen te
gappen.”
„Zeg nou eens eerlijk,” zegt Chris plotseling. „Wie van jullie heeft nog
nooit wat gegapt?”
Op dit uur is het in den Dierentuin zeer stil; bezoekers zijn er niet en
de werklieden zijn aan ’t schaften.
Ambro, die statig wilde opstaan, maar bijtijds bedacht, dat hij bij die
beweging hevig z’n bol zou stooten, begroette ze met een plechtig
handgewuif en sprak op verheven toon:
„Wat kan Ambro z’n woorden toch mooi kiezen,” merkt Paul op, die
nog onder den indruk is van de plechtige begroeting.
„Och, jôh! dat heeft ie uit ons taalboekie, al die flauwe kul kent hij uit
z’n kanes,” zegt Chris, daarmee Ambro allen roem ontnemend.
„Nee, jij hebt tranen met tuiten gehuild,” plaagt Piet. „Je oogen zien
nòg rood.”
Ambro en Wim gaan er echter niet verder op in, vol als ze zijn van
een nieuw plan.
„O, neen, man!” zegt Wim. „Dat zal je gewaar worden. Ambro, hoe
zouden we ook weer doen?”
„Nou, we hebben niks anders noodig, dan een touwtje met een
kromme speld, een kadetje en een krant.”
„Niet meedoen, hoor!” zegt Ambro korzelig. „Vooral niet! Jullie zijn
ezels. Eerst afwachten en dan keffen.”
„Nou, dan zullen we maar geduld hebben,” zegt Paul. „Wat Ambro
voorstelt mislukt haast nooit.”
—————————————
Prompt kwart over vieren komt de bende terug bij de Hooge Brug
waar Ambro’s plan volvoerd moet worden. [205]
„Zei de oude niks, dat je er vanmorgen niet was,” informeert Wim bij
Ambro.
„Wat een opschepper,” begint Chris weer. „Ja, die laat zich nemen
met een kromme speld! Maar niet heusch!”
„Wachten jullie nou maar even. Van onder de brug uit kunnen jullie
me ’m eruit zien trekken. Maar ik moet eerst even koekeloeren of er
niemand in de buurt is. Hou de krant klaar, Wim, daar moet de heele
buit in. En dan gaan we ze bakken op ’t weiland bij den
Provenierssingel.”
„Dat kost ’m z’n heele kadetje en hij vangt er geen een,” zegt Piet.
In minder dan geen tijd zien ze aan de kringetjes op het water dat de
visschen, die gewoon zijn aan een dergelijke tractatie, van alle
kanten komen toezwemmen. Af en toe zien ze een zilverwit vischje
in dartelen sprong even boven het water uitkomen.
„Wat een zooi zijn d’r,” zegt Chris. „Dat wordt wat, hoor!”
„Zie je wel,” zegt Paul. „Je kunt Ambro, heusch, altijd gelooven.”
Maar Ambro, die zoo gauw hij kon, met z’n buit bij hen onder de
Brug is gekomen, beveelt onmiddellijke stilte.
„Probeeren mag je ’t, maar nou geloof ik op mijn beurt, dat ’t je nog
niet zoo glad zal afgaan.”
„Poeh! Ik heb nou gezien hoe ’t moet. Geef maar gauw het touwtje.”
Puckie gaat nu op zijn beurt aan ’t werk, doch telkens ondervindt hij,
dat de visschen wel in het brood happen, maar niet in de speld.
„Kijk die visch es springen,” hoont Chris. „Nou maar jij ken ’t. Als je
nog even doorgegaan hadt, was de vijver leeg geweest.”
„Vang jij ze dan maar,” zegt Wim. „Wij zullen er toch wel geen slag
van hebben en anders zitten we hier morgenochtend nog.” [208]
Het blijkt alweer, dat de visschen Ambro goed gezind zijn, want van
de viermaal, dat hij het touwtje liet zakken, sloeg hij er driemaal een
uit.
„Nou naar het weiland, vooruit, jongens, loopen! ’t kan nog best voor
zessen,” en in vollen draf hollen ze naar het nieuwe doel.
„Daar hebben we niet aan gedacht, maar aan den slootkant liggen
meestal oude ketels en pannen, wie weet is er niks bij.”
„Die heb ik hier,” roept Piet plotseling en hij rent op een plat ijzer
voorwerp af, dat half boven het water uitsteekt. Maar bij het uit ’t
water halen blijkt, dat ’t geen koekenpan, maar een oud vuilnisblik is.
„Maar hoe krijgen we dat boven het vuur?” vraagt Karel. „Ik houdt ’t
niet vast, want dan brand ik m’n klavieren.”
„Ik heb al wat,” roept Paul verheugd en hij komt met een eind
prikkeldraad aandragen.
„Juist,” zegt Ambro. „Nou zijn we klaar. Daar hangen we ’t blik in, en
binden ’t aan drie stokken boven een vuurtje; zal je dat effetjes fijn
zien branden.”
Drie lange stokken zijn gauw gevonden. Ambro heeft met zijn
beroemd zakmes drie wilgentakken afgesneden. Die worden
kruislings op den grond geplaatst en van boven met een touwtje
verbonden. Na veel moeite hangt het vuilnisblik te bengelen aan het
ijzerdraad.
„Moet het blik niet eerst schoon gemaakt?” vraagt Paul bezorgd.
„Die eene leeft nog,” zegt Puckie terwijl hij de krant opendoet waarin
de visschen opgeborgen zijn.
„Dat zal niet lang meer duren,” merkt Chris op. „Z’n laatste uur heeft
geslagen.”
„We zullen ’m Jeanne d’Arc noemen, die werd immers ook gebakken
boven een houtvuurtje.”
„Vertroost me, wat is dat heet!” zegt hij, terwijl hij twee vingers in z’n
mond steekt. „Vooruit, Puckie, geef op ’n visch, we zullen met één
beginnen, dan zien we wat er van komt.”
Een der slachtoffers wordt netjes op het blik gelegd en begint hevig
te sissen.
„Ik geloof, dat er niks van overblijft,” zegt Ambro, die met een
bezorgd gezicht de visch steeds kleiner ziet worden.
Met een onverstaanbaren uitroep spuwt hij het lekkere hapje uit.
„Dan zullen we ’t met den laatsten maar niet meer probeeren,” zegt
Puckie.
„Zonde, dat we ’m nou voor niks uit het water hebben gehaald,” vindt
Paul.
„Laten we dan Zaterdag nog eens gaan,” stelt Chris voor, „En laten
we dan eerlijk een pan en een stukje boter te leen vragen, want als
we ’m gappen, komt de inspecteur ons kookgerij op school halen.”
„Afgesproken, ik zorg voor boter,” zegt Ambro. „En ik wou, dat ik dien
vuilen smaak kwijt was!”
„Een rijksdaalder,” vroeg Ambro ongeloovig. „Nou, nou, jij hebt een
goeien oom, die heeft zeker geen kinderen.”
„Nou, bij mij is armoe troef, ik heb pas drie en veertig spie, maar ik
ga weer drie dagen voor gids spelen in den Dierentuin, dat heeft me
verleden jaar ruim ’n riks opgebracht. Dat waren royale boeren!”
„Ja, maar jij hadt ook geen lint om je pet.—’t Is jammer, dat we niet
met de heele bende de kermis op kunnen,” zegt Ambro.
„O, ja, da’s waar, er gaan er een paar uit de stad. Wie gaan er
eigenlijk?”
„La’s kijken, Wim gaat naar ’t Ginniken, Paul, [214]zooals altijd naar
Vlaardingen, wat je daar nou an hebt, ik weet ’t niet, haringstank en
verder geen nieuws.”
„Nou, Piet zal ook wel de kermis niet op gaan, want die spaart al z’n
centen op voor een nieuwe fiets.”
„Of ze leven!” zegt Ambro. „Hij heeft ze gedresseerd. Een kan ’n pijp
rooken en de andere kan praten.”
Paul keek nog even verbaasd op, als hechtte hij geloof aan de
woorden van Ambro, maar ’t geval schijnt hem toch wel wat
wonderbaarlijk toe.
„Een vette kermispot,” zegt Ambro. „En er komt nog een boel bij.”
„Dàt weet ik vast,” zegt Chris. „We moeten naar ’t hippodrôme. Dàt
moet zoo eenig zijn!”
„En ik moet „de dikke dame” zien,” zegt Ambro. „Die heeft ’n paar
armen en beenen, zoo dik als een olifantspoot. En echt hoor! Je mag
er in prikken.”
„Je hebt er een tandarts bij, die ze de tanden uittrekt, dan kunnen ze
niet meer bijten.”
„En ik heb er in Peking een piano hooren spelen, een klein stukje,
maar ’t was toch heel mooi voor zoo’n klein beestje.”
„Hè, laten we nog een beetje doorgaan met onzin praten,” zegt Paul.
„Ik vond ’t juist zoo leuk.”
„Paul denkt, nou ie niks van de kermis ziet, moeten wij maar kermis
voor hem maken,” zegt Chris.
Plotseling geeft Ambro Chris een tik op zijn hoofd.
„Wat een lefschopper! Dat zou jij nooit halen, daar moet je nogal
geen kracht voor hebben,” zegt Puckie.
„Zal je gewaar worden, Vader! Met één vinger mep ik ’m de lucht in.”
„Ik vraag in zoo’n tijd niet wat mag,” zei Ambro. „Ik ga!”
„Als je klein bent, loop je nooit gevaar bij zooiets en ik geloof niet,
dat ’t zoo erg zal zijn,” zegt Ambro.
’t Is Kees, wiens werk het is, den vijver uit te baggeren en die lang
geen vriend van de jongens is, daar deze ’t hem meermalen lastig
hebben gemaakt.
Ambro hoopte den toestand nog met een grap te kunnen redden en
zei:
„Waar gaat de reis heen, Kees? Mogen we niet mee? We zullen niet
snoepen van de chocoladevla in je bootje.”
„Ja, hou je gebbetjes maar voor je, kwaje aap,” snauwde Kees hem
toe. „Hoe komme jullie hier?”
„Met een extra trein uit New-York,” zegt Chris, die, als ie ziet, dat de
zaak tòch verloren is, brutaal wordt.
„Ik zal rapport van jullie make en je name hoef ik niet te wete, want
die weet ik als te best. Jullie benne bekend als de bonte hond, en as
je nou denk, ons altijd te glad af te zijn, dan bin je d’r naast. Jullie
binne nou zuur, reken maar!”